Policy Group Templates in the Elisity Cloud Control Center simplify and standardize policy management by allowing administrators to create reusable templates for Policy Groups. These templates help maintain consistency, reduce the risk of misconfiguration, and streamline the deployment of security policies across multiple locations. By leveraging Policy Group Templates, organizations can efficiently manage security settings while minimizing administrative overhead.** Policy Group Templates in the Elisity Cloud Control Center provide a structured, scalable, and efficient way to streamline and standardize security policies across multiple Policy Groups, reducing the risk of misconfiguration. This feature allows administrators to create standardized templates from which Policy Groups can derive match criteria and security settings, ensuring consistency and reducing the administrative burden of managing policies at scale.
Key Benefits
- Consistency and Compliance: Standardizes match criteria across various Policy Groups.
- Simplified Administration: Reduces manual errors and streamlines policy management.
- Scalability: Enables organizations to deploy policies efficiently across multiple locations.
- Operational Efficiency: Allows bulk updates to policies through a single template modification.
Use Cases
Shared Match Criteria Across Policy Groups
Organizations often have sets of Global or Local Policy Groups that share common match criteria, such as different Policy Groups for various types of PCs, printers, or IoT devices. Policy Group Templates provide an efficient way to standardize these shared criteria while allowing additional match criteria to be layered on top as needed. By using a template, administrators ensure that all related Policy Groups maintain a consistent baseline configuration while still enabling site-specific or department-specific customizations. This approach simplifies policy management, reduces configuration errors, and enhances scalability.
Multi-Site Enterprises
Organizations with multiple locations can streamline policy management by using Policy Group Templates. Instead of configuring policies manually for each site, administrators can apply predefined templates, ensuring consistency while reducing setup time and misconfiguration risks. Additionally, changes made to a template are automatically reflected across all linked Policy Groups, allowing for centralized management and more efficient policy adjustments at scale.
Onboarding New Sites and Acquisitions
Organizations onboarding large numbers of locations need a streamlined way to create Local Policy Groups efficiently. Policy Group Templates simplify this process by allowing administrators to define reusable structures that standardize security policies across new sites. Instead of configuring policies manually for each location, administrators can apply predefined templates that ensure consistency, reduce deployment time, and minimize misconfiguration risks. Additionally, because Policy Groups inherit criteria from templates, administrators can manage policies centrally by updating the template, ensuring changes are reflected across all linked Policy Groups. This capability is particularly valuable for rapidly growing enterprises or companies undergoing mergers and acquisitions, enabling seamless integration of new sites into existing security frameworks.
Creating and Using Policy Group Templates
Step 1: Navigate to Policies > Policy Groups. Select Policy Group Templates and click Create Template.
Step 2: Define match criteria, such as device category, vendor, or trust attributes. You can optionally assign a Security Level to the Policy Group template. Save the template for use in Policy Groups.
Applying a Template to a Policy Group
Step 1: When creating a new Policy Group, select Add Template.
Step 2: Choose an existing template to inherit its predefined match criteria.
Step 3: Define any additional match criteria specific to the Policy Group.
Step 4: Save the Policy Group with the inherited template attributes.
Managing Templates and Updates
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- Any changes to a template automatically apply to linked Policy Groups.
- If a template is deleted, users receive warnings about the impact on linked Policy Groups.
- Policy Groups can only inherit criteria from one template at a time.
Best Practices
- Regularly review and update templates to align with evolving security needs.
- Use templates to enforce security policies consistently across all distribution zones.
- Monitor linked Policy Groups for any necessary adjustments after template modifications.
Conclusion
Policy Group Templates simplify policy enforcement, ensure compliance, and enhance operational efficiency. By leveraging this feature, administrators can effectively scale their security policies while maintaining a streamlined and manageable approach to policy group administration.